Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The Harrowing
True Story of The Greely Expedition

by Leonard F. Guttridge. Putnam, $27.95

In July 1881, 25 men sailed out on an
American expedition to create an Arctic scientific base in the
Lady Franklin Bay region. There were only six men still alive
three years later. Their diet just before rescue was human flesh
and shoe leather.

The Greely Expedition, so named for its
commander, Lieutenant Adolphus Greely, was to have been a
glorious triumph for America. On paper, it was. A three-hundred
year old record (held by British polar expeditions) was broken
for achieving the farthest point north toward the North Pole. But
the cost in human suffering, as with so many early polar
explorations, was a terrible one.

Guttridge spent seven years researching
this sad tale of bureaucratic largess, government negligence, and
expedition infighting. He was aided by a common habit of the era,
journal keeping. Many of the men kept diaries, not knowing their
words would survive them when they did not. Their families passed
the journals down the generations. Some were carefully stored,
some quite carelessly (one was stored in a silver vegetable
dish). These journal entries are a welcome addition to an already
fascinating and carefully-researched narrative. They provide
missing details of the expedition's three-year history and shed
light upon the psychological limitations of the human spirit
under extreme conditions.

This book does not give us that traditional
British reserve and stiff upper lip charm we have come to
associate with polar exploration. This is a group of Americans
mostly ill-prepared for the ordeal ahead of them. This is an
American government eager to put themselves on the international
map, but unwilling to meet the most basic requirements to keep
the expedition from certain disaster. Robert Todd Lincoln, son of
the slain president, comes off in a justifiably bad light.

The expedition was commanded by First
Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely. Second Lieutenant Frederick
Kislingbury and Physician and naturalist Octave Pavy form the
antagonistic triad that becomes the crux of the book. These men
were at cross-purposes just at the crucial time they needed to be
working together to survive. No one can know if more men might
have survived with a commander less rigid and more tolerant of
the human psyche than Greeley. No one can know if more men might
have survived had they fought less among themselves and been more
compliant with their responsibilities and orders.

The expedition's success relied upon the
arrival of yearly supply ships from America. When the crucial
amounts of food and supplies failed to arrive, the Greely
Expedition was doomed. Two years after their arrival at Fort
Conger, they were forced to abandon the base and all research
gathered in a desperate race to survive. This small group of men
had to cooperate to the utmost ability of the human spirit merely
to survive.

But Greely was barely on speaking terms by
then with both Pavy and Kislingbury. The latter, once second in
command, had actually been relieved of his duties and was in a
strange state of limbo from which he could not escape. Despite
his tragic fate, it appears Kislingbury continued to provide
assistance in a bad situation, although Greely refused to
reinstate him or even thank him for his efforts to assist in the
men's survival.

The other expedition members had already
spent two years under Greely's command and found it lacking in
the extreme conditions of the Arctic. One member, David Brainard
wrote in his journal, "This man (I cannot call him a
gentleman) comes among us like a serpent in Eden and creates
eternal hatred toward himself."

The expedition set out in five boats with
40 days of rations. Before them lay hundreds of miles of water
and icy Arctic lands that had to be crossed to survive. No sooner
were they underway than Greely's indecision and inexperience in
the Arctic, and Pavy's mutinous plots began to turn the hands of
fate faster toward a terrible doom.

At last, they became trapped on Cape
Sabine, unable to travel farther south. The men awaited rescue
for eight months. The inevitable food stealing and cannibalism
took place. One by one, the men began to die. Their rescuers
found Greely and six others alive...and eating their shoes. Pavy,
Kislingbury, and 16 others were dead.

This previously little known chapter in
Arctic history was meticulously researched by Guttridge and is
fascinating reading, especially for those unaware of America's
attempt to put itself at the forefront of international
exploration. The reader is advised to stock up the larder, and
settle in with a cup of warm tea and a fuzzy blanket before
attempting to read the icy travails of the Greely Expedition.